Republicans Trying, Failing to Come Up With Good Reasons to Conceal Trump Taxes

Donald Trump, President of the United States and legitimate businessman.
Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The first two years of the Trump administration, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress and could quash any movement to compel the release of President Trump’s tax returns without much public discussion. Now that Democrats control the House, and have the legal power to get the tax returns, Republicans have been forced to muster positive arguments for why Trump should be able to conceal his financial information.

Given that every presidential candidate for four decades, other than Donald Trump, has released their tax returns, and that the law enables Congress to acquire anybody’s tax returns, it seems like a slam-dunk case for why Congress should be able to look at Trump’s. But Trump does not want anybody to see his tax returns, and so reasons to support his position must be supplied.

1. Democrats don’t know what the tax returns will show. “What is remarkable is that even the most aggressive Democrats don’t seem to have a clear idea what they will find in the returns. They’re just sure there must be something bad in there,” writes Byron York, in a column calling the Democratic plan the “ultimate fishing expedition.”

It’s certainly true that Democrats don’t know exactly what’s in the Trump tax returns. That’s why they want them — if they did know everything already, they wouldn’t need to get them. On the other hand, there is ample reason to suspect the Trump tax returns contain information of high public interest, if not multiple outright crimes. When the New York Times dug into Trump’s New York tax information, it found proof of massive tax fraud.

Reporters have found evidence of Trump engaging in corruption, fraud, money laundering, and lots and lots of covert dealings with Russia. That’s just the stuff journalists have managed to suss out so far. The tax returns may well also turn up other crimes, because Trump is a crook. But the sheer scope of incriminating evidence that might turn up in a look at the president’s tax returns is not a very compelling reason to keep them private.

2. Trump won, so what are you gonna do. The Boston Heraldeditorializes that “Democrats have not gotten over the 2016 presidential election” and, by scrutinizing Trump’s tax returns, “harangue and harass the president with the ultimate hope that they can unearth some evidence of criminality somewhere.”

The editorial oddly does not deny the likelihood that Democrats will unearth evidence of criminality, it simply hinges its case on the supposition that Democrats have no right to scrutinize the criminal who defeated them.

3. Republicans will take revenge. If Congress uses the law to get Trump’s tax returns, it could target other people, ones who aren’t presidents with a long record of criminal financial activity. “Where does it end?” [GOP congressman Mike] Kelly asked. “What about the tax returns of the Speaker? Members of Congress? Federal employees? Or, for that matter, any political donors? There is no end in sight for those whose tax information may be in jeopardy.”

Representative Devin Nunes put a finer point on the threat: “Once you go down the road, there’s no turning back, because then it ratchets up. Because at some point, Republicans will be back in power. There are lots of people we could have subpoenaed their tax returns the last few years that would be very interesting.”

It’s true, the law allows Congress to get anybody’s tax returns. Maybe it’s dangerous to give Congress that power, but that’s an argument against passing a law creating this power in the first place. Since it already exists, why not use it in a case where an extremely compelling public interest exists?

If Republicans are worried about the potential for the abuse of private citizens, they could repeal the law letting Congress look at anybody’s tax returns and replace it with a narrower law that applies only to high-ranking officials like the president. But since Republicans oppose laws to force the president to publish his tax returns, here we are.

One common thread through all these defenses is that they take Trump’s decision to break precedent and conceal his tax returns as a given. From there, they focus all the scrutiny on Democrats and their nefarious motives for getting the tax returns. And so none of Trump’s defenders have bothered to construct a motive for Trump’s decision to conceal his tax returns. It’s just something we must all accept. The president has done business with, and employed, a large number of criminals, is under state and federal investigation for a wide array of alleged crimes, but his decision to keep his financial information private apparently tells us nothing whatsoever about the secrets it may contain.

Promoted links by Taboola

THE FEED

21 mins ago

WhatsApp with that?

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, uses an unofficial online messaging service for official White House business, including with foreign contacts, his lawyer told the House Oversight Committee late last year.

The lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he was not aware if Mr. Kushner had communicated classified information on the service, WhatsApp, and said that because he took screenshots of the communications and sent them to his official White House account or the National Security Council, his client was not in violation of federal records laws.

In a letter disclosing the information, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said that he was investigating possible violations of the Presidential Records Act by members of the Trump administration, including Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump. He accused the White House of stonewalling his committee on information it had requested for months.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to stop disparaging the late Sen. John McCain, calling the Vietnam war hero “a dear friend” and defending him against the president’s criticisms. …

Ernst’s remarks came during a town hall meeting at a high school in Adel, Iowa, where several attendees voiced anger about Trump’s attacks about McCain. One attendee described McCain as a “genuine war hero” and called Trump’s comments about McCain “cowardly.”

“I do not appreciate his tweets,” Ernst said, when pressed by the attendee why she didn’t previously speak out more forcefully. “John McCain is a dear friend of mine. So, no I don’t agree with President Trump and he does need to stop.”

As we anticipate the end of Mueller, signs of a wind-down:-SCO prosecutors bringing family into the office for visits-Staff carrying out boxes-Manafort sentenced, top prosecutor leaving-office of 16 attys down to 10-DC US Atty stepping up in cases-grand jury not seen in 2mo

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.

Tech companies say that it is easier to identify content related to known foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda because of information-sharing with law enforcement and industry-wide efforts, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group formed by YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter in 2017.

On Monday, for example, YouTube said on its Twitter account that it was harder for the company to stop the video of the shootings in Christchurch than to remove copyrighted content or ISIS-related content because YouTube’s tools for content moderation rely on “reference files to work effectively.” Movie studios and record labels provide reference files in advance and, “many violent extremist groups, like ISIS, use common footage and imagery,” YouTube wrote.

The cycle is self-reinforcing: The companies collect more data on what ISIS content looks like based on law enforcement’s myopic and under-inclusive views, and then this skewed data is fed to surveillance systems, Bloch-Wehba says. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have enough visibility in the process to know whether these tools are proportionate to the threat, whether they filter too much content, or whether they discriminate against certain groups, she says.

Two mystery litigants citing privacy concerns are making a last-ditch bid to keep secret some details in a lawsuit stemming from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s history of paying underage girls for sex.

Just prior to a court-imposed deadline Tuesday, two anonymous individuals surfaced to object to the unsealing of a key lower-court ruling in the case, as well as various submissions by the parties.

Both people filed their complaints in the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseeing the case. The two people said they could face unwarranted speculation and embarrassment if the court makes public records from the suit, in which Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges.

Rescue teams in Mozambique are struggling to reach the thousands of people stranded on roofs and in trees and urgently need more helicopters and boats as post-cyclone flood waters continue to rise.

Rescue workers, military personnel and volunteers are rushing to save thousands of Mozambicans before flood levels rise further, but with four helicopters, a handful of boats and extremely difficult conditions, have only been able to save about 413 so far.

“I don’t even know if we’ve made a dent. There are just so many people. The scale is huge. We’re busy doing the best we can,” said Travis Trower from Rescue South Africa, adding that a lot of people had been washed away but those still alive, whom he had seen from helicopter flights, were in a very bad state.

More than 400 sq kilometres (150 sq miles) in the region are flooded, according to satellite images taken by the EU, and in some places the water is six metres (19ft) deep. At least 600,000 people are affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ranging from those whose lives are in immediate danger to those who need other kinds of aid.